Aircraft Carriers
HMS Queen Elizabeth –
Budget: £3bn
Actual cost: £5.9bn
HMS Prince of Wales –
Budget: £3.1bn
Actual cost: £6.2bn
Destroyers
Type 45 Destroyers –
£1.5bn overbudget & 2 years late
Crossrail
Budget: £14.6bn
Actual cost: £18.8bn & 3 1/2 years late
Nimrods
£4bn was spent on Nimrods, which were scrapped before they flew. The MoD then had to spend £2.5bn buying AWACs from the USA.
AJAX Tanks
So far, £3.5bn has been spent, and not a single tank is in use -it is also more than 5 years late.
Test and Protect
An unbelievable £37bn was spent on Test and Protect in England. In Scotland, we got it done with under £90m.
Scams
During Covid-19, the Department of Work and Pensions estimated that more than £8bn was lost to scammers and errors.
HS2
Budget: £56bn
Actual cost (for a smaller than planned project): £106bn
PPE
Around £10bn worth of PPE was found to be unusable. A further £436m was spent on storing it before it could be destroyed.
UK Debt
The Financial Times has accused Rishi Sunak of losing £11bn of tax-payer money because he failed to ensure our debt from rising interest rates.
Liz Truss
The doomed budget set by Liz Truss and her cabinet cost the country a staggering £30bn even though she was the shortest-serving Prime Minister.
What else?
There are loads of other conservative calamities which have cost us millions:
Scrapping burgundy passports – £8.6m
A tagging system which was scrapped before it started – £98m
Hiring ferries after Brexit (the company they paid never had ferries) – £50m
Painting Boris’ Plane – £900,000